The country's system for handling end-of-life care is largely broken and should be overhauled at almost every level, a national panel concluded in a report released on Wednesday.
The 21-member nonpartisan committee, appointed by the Institute of Medicine, the independent research arm of the National Academy of Sciences, called for sweeping change.
"The bottom line is the health care system is poorly designed to meet the needs of patients near the end of life," said David M. Walker, a Republican and a former United States comptroller general, who was a chairman of the panel. "The current system is geared towards doing more, more, more, and that system by definition is not necessarily consistent with what patients want, and is also more costly."
Many of the report's recommendations could be accomplished without legislation. For example, the panel urged insurers to reimburse health care providers for conversations with patients on advance care planning. Medicare, which covers 50 million Americans and whose members account for about 80 percent of deaths each year, is considering doing just that, prompted by a recent request from the American Medical Association. Some private insurers are already covering such conversations, and many more would if Medicare did.
But some recommendations — like changing the reimbursement structure so that Medicare would pay for home health services instead of emphasizing hospital care, and so that Medicaid would provide better coverage of long-term care for the frail elderly — would require congressional action.
More ...
